As Michelle notes, it’s about that time of year when decisions have to be made on which grad school to attend. Michelle has lots of good advice for what to look for in a grad school, though I wanted to quibble with a couple of things and expand on another.

One important thing to remember about grad school is that you’re going to end up spending much more time talking philosophy with other grad students than you are with professors. That isn’t to say you’ll learn more from the other grad students (though you might) but it is to say it’s an important consideration in picking a school. (I think lots of the points Michelle rightly makes flow from this fact.) If the other students are smart, and energetic, and interested in talking about other people’s work, that will make an enormous difference to how much you get out of grad school.

Having said that, I do think school quality is more important than Michelle allows.

bq. Don’t just look at the academic and hiring strengths of the departments…also keep in mind whether you’ll be *happy* in that department. Too often the academic strengths are emphasized so much that we as graduate students are willing to put up with six years of personal hell to go to a school that’s slightly better than one in which we’d be happy

Taken literally, that’s good advice. Don’t go somewhere you’ll be miserable. Do be prepared to make small trade-offs for a higher quality of life.

But be careful!

In a few years time when you’re going on the job market you’ll be looking for every possible advantage, and if you turned down a school with better placement records/facilities to be where you actually are, you may very much regret that. At the very least, before you make such a trade-off, look __very closely__ at the placement records of each school to be sure you know what you’re getting in for.

This isn’t to say you should pick the highest Leiter-ranked school. I think I still agree with my earlier judgment that a student who is accepted everywhere should go to MIT other things being equal. (Assuming their area is covered by MIT, which is a salient concern given how small the department is.) But remember that lots of really good departments, with high-profile well-respected faculty and smart hard-working graduate students have placement records that aren’t that good.

I also wanted to quibble with the assumption that you’ll be in grad school for six years. Seriously, I think every new student should go in with a plan of being done in four years. The plan won’t work (in most cases) and you’ll end up needing the fifth year for things, but I think it’s the right attitude to take. At the very least a new grad student should think that she’ll be able to plausibly apply for post-docs in her area of expertise (if any come on the market) in her fourth year. There might not be any such things, or she might not get offered any, but in the worst case scenario she’ll have a sense for what the job market is like which can only help when she properly goes on the job market in year 5. In my experience (which I think is typical) you do a lot better on the job market if you’ve been through it all before.